Newsjacking Virality

I read a really interesting blog on Hubspot written by Rachel Sprung that talked about 7 companies who jumped on the viral craze at just the right time in order to get attention for their own videos as parodies of the current viral video. below is an excerpt and link to the post. It's worth checking out if only for the videos.

"Remember what you thought when you first saw the Old Spice guy? When
you heard the musical stylings of Carly Rae Jepsen in the emotional
roller coaster "Call Me Maybe?" How about when you saw the inexplicably
catchy "Gangnam Style" dance? These are some examples of virality (the
marketing kind) at its best.

Thing is, viral marketing is not easy. There's just no way
to know if that funny new video you're creating is going to get
1,000,000 views, or 10. So what can you do?

Newsjack virality, that's what you can do. In other words, you can take something that's already gone viral, and piggyback on its success by creating your own awesome spin on it.
There are several companies out there who have done it -- and done it
well. So we're going to highlight them in the blog post to help inspire
you to jump on the next viral craze! Or, you know, so you can just
relive funny viral trends. Whatever works."